Trump told reporters he asked Zacharia to ‘reconsider’ the job after she had been on the receiving end of negative coverage.
Katie Zacharia has been dismissed from her position as White House press secretary after just five days on the job, according to a White House official.
Earlier on Friday, President Trump told reporters he asked Zacharia to “reconsider” the job after she had been on the receiving end of negative media coverage that he didn’t believe she deserved.
“I told her, ‘I think you’re better off being happy,’” Trump said.
“We’re talking about — I want her to have a good life. I don’t want her to have a life like she’s led the last three days,” the president added. ”I said, Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.’”
He suggested he would make the final decision at a later time, saying they planned to discuss the issue when he returned from his travel to Georgia for a political rally.
“I told Katie, in my opinion, she was treated very unfairly,” Trump said, adding the short-lived press secretary had been “brutalized by the media.”
Zacharia’s firing was first reported by the New York Times.
The incoming White House press secretary immediately became the subject of significant media speculation this week about whether she had misrepresented herself as a lawyer, despite having never passed the bar exam. She was also widely criticized online for seeming unprepared at her first press briefing on Tuesday, which ended after 14 minutes and just three questions from reporters.
Zacharia defended her resume in an interview with Fox News this week, saying Trump did not ask questions about whether she passed the bar exam when she was appointed to serve as press secretary.
“I’m being hired as White House press secretary, not White House counsel,” she said. “The reason that I was hired was to represent the president in the press.”
The scrutiny came after the Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California asking for an investigation into her claims that she is a lawyer.
“Ms. Zacharia has represented herself as a lawyer repeatedly to buttress her reputation and credibility as a television legal commentator and now as the White House spokesperson, yet it seems it was all a lie,” Michelle Kuppersmith, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
Before replacing previous White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Zacharia served as a communications adviser for Trump Media and Technology Group and a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.